The Kenya Revenue Authority is set to link its automated taxpayers’ database to bank accounts of ordinary citizens in a move expected to smoke out thousands of tax evaders.
The Ksh765 million database known as Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence offers a single view of a taxpayer’s profile, linking them with third-party systems such as banks and utility firms for easier determination of compliance.
KRA currently faces massive challenges in tracking tax cheats because it uses multiple databases that hamper analysis and detection of fraudulent behaviour, the authority’s project manager Yvonne Wafula says in the latest publication of the Treasury’s Public Financial Management Programme.
The improved data matching and risk profiling solution, to be installed by 2017, will facilitate the interfacing of KRA’s systems with internal and strategic external systems for information exchange.
Information gathered from such sources will be used to analyse unreported activities of taxpayers, to detect tax fraud, and to score and rank risk profiles.
“Analysis and matching of data will provide insight into nil and non-filers. Each taxpayer will be uniquely identified to facilitate the tracking of their activities,” Ms Wafula says, adding that communication with third party systems such as banks would result in identification of more taxpayers resulting into an expanded tax base.
The Treasury has been under pressure to increase its tax collections to fund several ongoing and upcoming infrastructure projects, including a new railway, and to pay for the devolved administrative units created in 2013 under the new Constitution.
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